


Les Bêtes

by afterandalasia



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War Z Fusion, Community: disney_kink, F/M, France (Country), Interviews, Minor Character Death, Oral History, Survival Horror, Violence, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1913961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I meet Belle Durand in a cafe on the edge of the reclaimed areas of Paris. Hers has been one of the most striking stories of survival through the war, publishing even before mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Les Bêtes

**Author's Note:**

> From the [anon prompt](http://disney-kink.livejournal.com/361.html?thread=1760361#t1760361) at the Disney Kink Meme. Beauty and the Beast (1991) characters, but using the setting and format of World War Z - Max Brooks.

**[I meet Belle Durand in a cafe on the edge of the reclaimed areas of Paris. Despite her years, she is still a strikingly beautiful woman, with warm brown eyes and a welcoming smile. A group of children run past, laughing and playing some game, and she shifts her chair out of the way slightly to let a man in a wheelchair roll past.]**  
  
It was always there, you know, all of the knowledge that we needed. The archaeological sites, the historical stories. It was just that no-one had put it all together. Of course, people use the word zombie and are most aware of the Haitian origins of the word, but that is the work of a person, rather than an infection. Haitain zombies don't _spread_.  
  
No, there are folk memories there, of that blurred line between life and death. Did you know that we still aren't sure what death really _is_? Oh, we know alive and we know dead, but the point at which someone actually dies is still a mystery to us. Brain death, cardiopulmonary death... I'm probably boring you, aren't I?  
  
**No, please, go on.**  
  
Well, cardiopulmonary death is when the heart stops, you see, and brain death is when the brain stops. And you can get one without the other -- hearts can restart and people come back, or they can keep beating after the brain has rotted away. The Solanium virus, as it is now known, has only blurred the lines further, but at the same time it has made the debate quite irrelevant. Once the person is infected, they might as well be dead already; once the heart stops, there is nothing left to do.  
  
**How much of this did you know before the war began?**  
  
War? It was hardly a war in the beginning. It was stories, and being a journalist meant that I came across them from time to time. Of course, I also came across stories about Bigfoot and aliens, so...  
  
Well, I suppose we may yet find Bigfoot, as long as the zombies did not get there first.  
  
I kept track of things, as is my nature, in one folder among many. It was only when I noticed that folder was getting larger that I started to pay real attention to it.  
  
**Was it then that you published your article?**  
  
Good lord, no! There was far more research to do before I had anything coherent. I started to put together this pattern of things, though, and was emailing my father Maurice a draft that I had for an article, when the government flagged it.  
  
I think that scared me more than the idea of zombies! Or perhaps both together scared me, the fact that the government actually took me seriously enough over half a draft article about _les mort-vivants_ that I was putting together.  
  
**[For a moment, she pauses, turning to look at the people walking down the street. Though Paris does not have the feeling of gaiety and excitement that it once did, there is hope in the air.]**  
  
It is different, now, to how it was then. It may look the same, but the people are different, even those of us who lived here before. We have ideas and knowledge and words in our head that did not previously exist. Solanium and quisling and all of the nicknames for zombies. We called them beasts, mostly: _bêtes_. But that was later.  
  
This was not long before the Great Panic started in America, but it is easy to say that now, in hindsight. At the time, I was just asked to attend a meeting with a local government representative, only to find that there were soldiers waiting at my door and I was taken under armed guard. Before I knew it, I was in a room with the President, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence... and those were the ones that I recognised.  
  
Israel had just announced its quarantine, and out of everything that the government had been scanning, what I had written was the most _accurate_ track of outbreaks that they could confirm. They told me to start writing immediately.  
  
Make no mistake, what I wrote was not an article. People call it that now, probably because there is no real word for it. It was on the front page of every paper in France by the next morning, by government decree. I've heard it was published in some other countries as well, just hours later.  
  
**What was it like?**  
  
It was the truth, pure and simple. The government confirmed that these creatures were, well, zombies. They didn't give me that word, though, so I used _bêtes_. I said that they were not infected, but dead, that they were spreading, and that it was important to listen to everything that the government said.  
  
**I mean writing it. What was it like to have that responsibility?**  
  
I...  
  
**[She shakes her head, and looks at the empty teacup in her hand. The vivacity which has poured off her seems to dim for a moment.]**  
  
I often wonder if I could have done it differently. If I could have used different words, or just plain refused. But the government handed me their files to put with my own research, and told me to write an alert for the country. Could you have refused?  
  
They gave me all that they had, twenty-four hours. I could not have done any more, I know that now, but sometimes you can know something without feeling it. Do you understand?  
  
**Was that why you wrote the book?**  
  
In the end? Yes. It feels strange to call it a book now. For so long, it was just a lot of papers, stuffed in a bag. Once I was allowed to leave, I went to my father; he lives in a small town, in the country. They remembered me there, and though they didn't trust me at first they listened to the radio, and they realised that I was right.  
  
There was this one man...  
  
**[Another shake of her head, this one more disapproving than saddened.]**  
  
His name was Gaston. He thought that we could meet them head-on, and when rumours came in of an infection in the next village, he rounded up a posse to go after them. _Connard_. That was when I met Adam, actually. I followed this group -- on horseback! Of all things -- to this old manor house, abandoned for years. They had found a group of _bêtes_ and just gone in to fight them. Of course, they just got themselves killed or worse.  
  
I wasn't carrying a weapon. Doesn't that sound strange, now? We always go armed; I have a gun in my handbag and a shortsword on my hip, and that feels natural. But this was years ago. The horse, my father's horse, did the sensible thing and ran, but threw me off first. I managed to hold them off. I knew what I was doing, even if I only had a fallen branch to use. But they had me surrounded, and I would have died for sure.  
  
Then this figure comes out of nowhere, wielding a side-sword, and cuts them down. All blows to the neck or the head, actually killing them.  
  
**That was Adam.**  
  
That was Adam. Adam Sauvage, what a name to have. He was the curator of the old mansion. He had never really come down to the town much; people... well, he was frightened of them, and they didn't like him. Even now, he doesn't like being around people too much.  
  
But he is a good person, and he saved me that day. He opened up the mansion, as well, to those of us who would go there. And the rest, as they say, is history.  
  
**You survived.**  
  
To my surprise. Don't get me wrong; I'm not a pessimist by nature. But when the radio stations went down one by one, and the skies darkened, and in some winters we trapped wolves to eat, because they were the last animals left that could outrun the bêtes in the area... there were times that I thought we were the only ones who were left, that it was only a matter of time.  
  
We just didn't lose hope, I suppose, though I don't know how. Maybe it was something in us, or in the place. This huge old mansion, all dusty and dark, but it had high walls and solid gates and land closed inside, and that was enough somehow. Adam kept to himself a lot of the time, or only talked to me, but he came out of his shell slowly. He knew the most about fighting of all of us, at least once our ammunition ran out and the guns became useless. And he was the brave one. We had land, but no plants, but he must have heard us talking about it because suddenly one morning there were boxes of seeds there. I never got him to say how he got them.  
  
And then Radio Free Earth came on, and we knew that we weren't alone. We had a celebration that night, dressing up in all of the old clothes! The mansion had been intended to be a museum, but never finished. There was this great old golden ballgown that Mrs. Potts -- we called her that, all the way through, never Marie -- persuaded me to wear, and somebody found and managed to tune up a violin, and this battered old trumpet that could barely hit the right notes. But it was wonderful.  
  
Adam didn't come to the celebration, but I caught him just outside, in the garden. He said that he was happy, as well. And that was what counted, I think, just moments of happiness.  
  
**[I express again my desire to interview Adam, and Belle turns me down flatly. Even now, Adam does not react well to strangers, especially ones like me who ask so many questions.]**  
  
He's a good man. Before all of this, he would have just led a quiet life keeping that mansion, but instead he saved all of us by letting us in. I wish sometimes that I hadn't mentioned him in the book, but I was just using us as a case study. I didn't exactly have any, then.  
  
**[Belle Durand is the only journalist who has beaten me to publication of a story about the Zombie War. Hers is more local, however, and more autobiographical in nature. It remains one of the most detailed documentations of life during the war to exist.**  
  
_Belle et les bêtes_ , that is what they call it now. As if it was just me against them all. What an image! But it sold, and it sells still, and I am glad that I wrote it in the end. I hear that they are still writing stories like it, in places that haven't been freed yet. But for me, I am done with writing, I think. I've lived my adventure. I'm ready for the ever after now, happily or not.  
  
**[A few days later, I try to contact Belle again, to see if there is anything more which she wants to say to me. She has disappeared from Paris, and try as I might, I never manage to find her again. I hope that her ever after comes, if not forever, then at least mostly happily.]**


End file.
